I coach people who have cancer at the healing center where I have had the privilege of being a part of their healing.  The people whom I call heart-surfers are there for healing of their disease, which is often cancer.  They have come to the healing center for many reasons, including having hope that they will be cured of their disease.  I tell the heart-surfers that a ham is cured and that they are the healers of their disease.  Most heart-surfers look at me in disbelief at first because they are not aware of their own healing power that resides within them.  They have appealed to a higher authority for their healing either in the form of a white coat or white robe.  They have been taught to have hope that they will be cured based upon meeting certain expectations or conditions that have been set up by others for their healing to take place.  They live their healing in an outside- in approach through following the doctor’s orders or through petitioning a higher power to see them as deserving of being healed.  Either way, there are conditions that need to be met in order for there to be a cure or receive healing.  Most of what heart-surfers hope for is based upon their beliefs and values that they will meet these expectations and then be eligible for some kind of cure.  

The heart-surfer is free to incorporate whoever and whatever they want in their healing process.  I don’t interfere with any of their values and beliefs as a coach.  My role isn’t to persuade them to change anything that they hold sacred to their healing.  My role is to challenge them in their values and beliefs that may be keeping them in a state of disease.  I have learned that there is something that t have learned is that the heart-surfer holds sacred that may be contributing to their disease.  

One of the things that I have learned in my time coaching  heart-surfers is that the heart-surfer may be misinterpreting something that they have been taught about their values and beliefs that is toxic to their healing.  I often hear heart-surfers tell me that they hope to be healed from their disease.  Their values and beliefs have taught them their healing is a future based healing that is contingent upon other things that must first be met.  This kind of future oriented  outside-in approach to healing is based upon many things that have been taught to us through different mediums like songs that we listen to daily.  Tomorrow will be brighter, better.  We are taught in our society to live for Friday and the end of the week.  Tough it out until then.  Hump day is the middle of the week and is considered a celebration of sorts because we are halfway through the week.  The message is constantly to look forward to tomorrow or the end of the week.  The CURE sings a song about Friday being the day to be in love.  Monday doesn’t matter along with most of the other days.  These kinds of messages about the future are what keep us from living in the present moment.  The message is if life sucks today, there is always tomorrow.  We can always have hope for a better tomorrow.  Politicians make these speeches about how tomorrow will be better, just we wait and see.

The false assumption that most of us make is that there is a tomorrow.  Tomorrow isn’t promised or guaranteed to us.  This is a hope that we have that there will be a tomorrow.  I refer to my most challenging sign that I have seen in the Irish pub where I have enjoyed going.  The sign says free beer tomorrow.  One of my favorite mantras is if it is free , then it is for me.  I like to get things for free. Who doesn’t?  Then there is the other saying that goes there’s no such thing as a free lunch.  We have to pay for everything in one way or another.   Which saying do you prefer to live by?  There is a catch to the first one and that is it is never tomorrow.  It is always today.  No free beer for me then.  Darn it.  There is no way to get that free beer because it is always today.  Beyond that,   there isn’t even a promise of the next minute or hour let alone tomorrow. In this situation there is no free beer for me according to that sign.  There is another approach to getting the beer.  If you don’t like beer, then you can substitute whatever you like for beer.  What about now?  Can I have a beer now?   The answer is yes, whether I have to pay for it or not isn’t the issue. The question is am I worthy of having it NOW?  Who decides my worthiness?  

What is promised to us and readily available is the present moment.  The truth is the present moment is all we ever have.  The beautiful thing about the present moment is that If we missed the last one, the next one is already here.  We never have to wait for it like we do for a train or any other appointment.  It is always here waiting for us to acknowledge it and celebrate it.  All we have to do is accept the invitation and receive it as the gift it is intended to be.  

Let’s expand this view of having hope for a better tomorrow to healing.  Many heart-surfers have hope that they will be healed.  They live for tomorrow when they will feel better and have no pain when they wake up in the morning.  Once again, there is no promise that any of us will wake up tomorrow.  We would like to think and believe so based upon our past experience with it happening.  We base our values and beliefs upon our past experiences.  What else do we have to go upon in life other than our past.  Our past in many ways dictates both our present and future experiences.  If I woke up breathing today, then I can expect to wake up tomorrow and breathe.  My past living and breathing of almost sixty years tells me this to be true.  I have hope that this will be the case.  

My purpose for sharing this message isn’t to be a message of doom and gloom.  In fact, it is the complete opposite.  It is a message of HOPE, just not the kind most people are in a habit of listening to.  HOPE doesn’t have to be a future oriented concept.   My message is a RADICAL one because it offers heart-surfers to look at hope differently.  The message I am offering is to reframe hope to HOPE ( Having One’s Present Experience). This reframing of hope to HOPE empowers the heart-surfer to seize the moment and to recognize that their healing can begin NOW. (Noticing One’s Worthiness).  This kind of RADICAL shift is powerful and life changing when a heart-surfer sees themselves as worthy of making it.  The R in RADICAL represents a state of readiness to make the change in the way they view the message of HOPE.  

The challenge for me as a coach is to teach the heart-surfer that they can let go of the ROPE ( Resisting One’s Personal Empowerment) that they have been holding onto and attaching to their beliefs about healing being an outside-in and future oriented outcome.  I invite the heart-surfer to see themselves as the healer as much as the outside sources providing them with the resources to heal or cure them.  The heart-surfer has their own internal resources to heal themselves.  One of those internal resources is seeing themselves as worthy of healing without their healing  being connected to performance or doing anything to earn it.  Now that is RADICAL.

We are taught that most things are based upon earning them or doing things and taking action to promote obtaining them.  This way of living is based upon the Puritan work ethic that most of us have been taught to work hard and sweat to earn what we get in life.  This earning and deserving approach can then include our view of healing and how it happens.  Healing is viewed as something that is earned or deserved based upon eating the right foods, taking the right medications and following the orders of the doctors.  We live in a conditional society that promotes this kind of Popeye the sailor man approach..  If I eat my spinach, then I will be strong.  It makes everything conditional, including healing.  If I do what I am told by the doctors, then I may heal.  There is a condition on the condition as well in that there is no guarantee that following orders will get me the desired results, which includes healing.  The heart-surfer has hope that their healing will be the desired outcome.  

I can only invite a heart-surfer to make this RADICAL shift in the way they view healing as an inside-out approach that begins with them seeing themselves as having the power to see themselves as worthy of healing NOW.  I don’t have the power to make anyone I coach ready to make this kind of shift.  I tell the heart-surfers I coach that they have the power to heal NOW.  The invitation is for them to get out of their own way, which refers to their fixed view of their values and beliefs about how healing happens and when it happens.  A heart-surfer who is willing to suspend their values and beliefs to be able to explore all of them without fear or judgment is more able to accept this RADICAL proposal of changing their view of hope to HOPE.